


futile devices

by nothingunrealistic



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Roman Banks!Evan, Tumblr Prompt, there's a little bit of everything!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 17:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 8,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingunrealistic/pseuds/nothingunrealistic
Summary: For two kids who don't have anyone else to talk to, Jared and Evan are pretty terrible at talking to each other.A collection of ficlets based on prompts and originally posted on Tumblr.
Relationships: Evan Hansen/Jared Kleinman
Comments: 17
Kudos: 76





	1. things you didn't say at all

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if anyone reads collections of prompt fics, but I have over eight thousand words of these and like to keep things organized and centralized, so hey, why not post them all on AO3 together?
> 
> The title of each chapter is the prompt that inspired it; the end note of each chapter links to the original Tumblr post.

The string of texts starts coming in within a day of Jared begging Evan not to screw him over and hanging up.

** _Hey, man._ **

** _I just want to say I’m sorry._ **

** _For everything._ **

Jared’s sitting in the back of his calc class, robotically refreshing Twitter and not even trying to pay attention, when the first one pops up. By the time the third one appears, he’s halfway to the boys’ bathroom, clutching his phone and the oversized wooden plank that serves as a hall pass. 

He locks himself in the farthest stall and stares at the screen, waiting for new messages, for the axe to fall.

** _I know I was a dick._ **

** _I am a dick._ **

** _I’m trying not to be._ **

If Jared didn’t know better, he’d think he was writing these texts. Some version of himself that’s willing to give up his stupid pride if it means he might be able to hang on to Evan. 

Then again, if Evan can have the decency to apologize to him first and realize how shitty he’s been, maybe Jared can be that better version of himself.

He starts tapping out a hesitant response.

_ Don’t worry about it, I| _

God, no. Evan hates when people tell him not to worry, and honestly, if there’s anything he ought to worry about, it’s this.

_ Okay so what are you going to do diffe| _

Not conciliatory at all. He doesn’t want to pick a fight right now. (Another fight.)

_ Tbh I feel the same w| _

He’s been typing for way too fucking long, because Evan sends yet another text, and he can just  _ hear _ the exact “please say yes because I can’t take any more of this conversation” tone it would have if delivered in person.

** _Are we good?_ **

If there’s anyone else in this bathroom, they’re being subjected to the sound of typing at about two hundred words per minute on an iPhone keyboard.

_ You got me to help you lie for months and then ditched me for your girlfriend when you didn’t need me anymore and tried to scare me into keeping your secret and now you think one apology makes us “good”??? Are you fucking st| _

_ I don’t think anything about us has ever been| _

** _If you ever want to hang or whatever…_ **

Jared has always  _ wanted. _ He wanted Evan to come over and get drunk with him instead of having to spend the weekend alone, and he wanted Evan to call him his friend again so that he could agree, and he wanted Evan to look at him the way he looks at Zoe, just once. He wants to rewind to the first day of school and do this year over again. He wants to call Evan right now and apologize for the last several years of their lives.

_ Of course I want to| _

_ I think I’m in l| _

** _Alright. Talk soon._ **

The bell for the end of class rings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/182872071953/here-come-my-bot-askskleinsen-for-9-or-5)


	2. things you said when i was crying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A perspective flip of a scene from [this fic of mine.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12802962)

When Evan woke up this morning, there were a lot of ways he thought today might end, but “crying in Jared’s minivan on the side of the road” wasn’t one of them. 

And yet, here he is, in the front passenger seat, clutching tissues in his bad hand, shoulders shaking, while Jared tentatively informs him that therapists exist.

“I already have a therapist.” For all the good that’s done him. He had a therapy appointment two days ago. “And you don’t understand.” 

“So can you explain it, then?” Jared demands, and as understanding and considerate as Jared’s been today, his tone now still stings. “Maybe starting with why you lied to a medical professional about a medical issue?”

“I just thought…” The splint on his arm is bright white in the fading light, a glaring reminder of how nothing ever turns out how he wants. “I thought it would be better this way.” He clears his throat and adds,“I thought that, that no one would care, that no one would notice…”

“Thought no one would notice what? That you broke your arm?” Of course Jared still doesn’t get it, how could he — Evan shouldn’t have said anything at all — “Snapping your ulna after accidentally high diving from a tree is pretty conspicuous, I don’t know why you’d think —”

“It wasn’t an accident!”

Silence. 

Evan wants to vanish, to erase every word he’s said in here from where it’s hanging in the air between them. He settles for curling into a ball where he is, tucking his feet up onto the seat over the protestation of a dim memory of Jared telling him, years ago, to not do that exact thing. His broken arm dangles at his side, flagrant and useless.

“…what?” Jared whispers at last. Evan has no idea what he might be thinking.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Evan says again. No new words will come to him. “Falling. I was, I thought… I just wanted…” 

He can’t say anything more.

A seat belt buckle clicks. Fabric slides against fabric, and an arm settles around his shoulders — Jared is  _ holding _ him, pulling him closer, and Evan crumples, leaning into Jared’s chest and sobbing. He feels so small. 

“Evan,” Jared says, voice shaking. and finally Evan can put a name to the emotion behind the word. Fear.

Jared’s scared for him.

“Evan,” he repeats. “If you… if you were gone. I would notice. I would care.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/182895328928/kleinsen-with-9)


	3. things you said when you thought i was asleep

_ The Godfather _ is a long movie. Almost three hours, which is way too long for something that you’re supposed to finish in one sitting, in Evan’s opinion.

He and Jared started watching somewhere around eleven, on opposite ends of Evan’s couch. It’s well after midnight now, a bunch of people and a horse are dead, and they’ve both migrated gradually to the center cushion, sitting maybe a foot apart. Right now, the characters on screen are discussing moving to Nevada.

“Why are they going to Las Vegas anyway?” Evan says over a yawn. 

“To run the casino, remember?” Jared gestures to the TV. “It’s part of the whole ‘we’re gonna be legitimate in five years’ thing.”

“Right.”

“When’s your mom supposed to be back?”

“Uh…” Evan searches his memory for all the other times his mom’s worked this same shift and he’s been awake long enough to hear her come home. “Like one thirty, I think? But she might have extra patients. I don’t know.”

Jared leans back against the couch. “That’s fine. It’s not like I wanted to sleep in my own house tonight or anything.”

Earlier today, Jared had shown up on his doorstep carrying a stack of DVDs and insisting on being let in because, apparently, Jared’s mom had told him to go keep Evan company while his mom is at work late. Evan still doesn’t know if it’s at all related to him stupidly telling his mom last week that he doesn’t like all the group projects they’re being assigned this year because he doesn’t have any friends that he can ask to work with him. He thinks she might have cried about that.

“Tom Hagen’s no longer consigliere,” Al Pacino’s character says. He’s pretty good-looking, actually, with dark hair and eyes and high cheekbones and a cool, commanding presence. No wonder there were two women in love with him at the same time.

Maybe he should keep that to himself.

“He’s still at the meeting, though,” Evan says instead. “I mean, it’s not like anything’s changed for him, really.”

“He’s at the meeting now,” Jared corrects. “But he’s gonna get kicked out of the room as soon as Michael and Vito want to talk about all the illegal shit they’re planning. A lawyer’s just a lawyer, he doesn’t get to know who you’re having murdered during the next family cookout.”

“Mm.” Evan closes his eyes.

“But the consigliere helps you decide exactly who you’re getting rid of and how. He’s there every step of the way. It’s touching, really.”

“Yeah, sure,” Evan mumbles. “Great mental image.”

“Maybe I could help,” Tom Hagen says, and Al Pacino responds, “You’re out, Tom,” without emotion.

The movie continues on in Las Vegas, without Evan. The conversation shifts to casinos and credit and taking sides. Everything is quiet and gauzy, and Evan’s mostly asleep when Jared starts talking again.

“A lawyer’s just a lawyer,” Jared repeats, this time not much more than a whisper. “The consigliere is the guy who knows everything, because you tell him everything. The one you’d trust with anything. He’s the guy who’s always there for you.”

Evan stays perfectly still, waiting for Jared to continue. He doesn’t, letting the movie play in silence and shifting a little on the couch so that it dips beneath him.

_ He’s the guy who’s always there for you. _

Somehow he doesn’t think he was supposed to hear that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/183015057264/12-kleinsen-o)


	4. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

Evan’s phone has barely stopped ringing for the past three days. He’s been getting calls around the clock — from the Murphys, from his mom, from Alana even though she’d ignored  _ his _ calls for half of that time, and from dozens and dozens of phone numbers without names attached, people he doesn’t know saying things he doesn’t want to hear. He learned pretty quickly not to answer those, and a little later how to block the ones that have called already, though new numbers keep popping up.

But he’s still surprised when his phone starts vibrating yet again and the caller ID displays Jared’s name.

Jared shouldn’t want to talk to him. Jared should never want to speak to him again, should be going out of his way to avoid him, should hate him like anyone would if they knew as much about him as Jared does —

His phone goes silent. And promptly resumes buzzing.

Evan sits through a second and a third call from Jared, staring at the smudged screen and silently willing him to just take the hint already. When a fourth call comes in, he gives up and swipes to answer, bracing himself to be shouted at.

There’s only silence at the other end of the line — no, not quite silence, he can hear breathing, just no one speaking. Maybe Jared’s called him by accident. Four times in a row.

“Uh… Jared?” he tries, and gets a sharp breath that fills one ear with static in response.

“Evan?” 

Who else would it be? “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you pick up the first time?” Jared sounds strange, words clipped and dull, voice taut like a rubber band stretched nearly to breaking. 

_ I hate phone conversations and most of the calls I’ve gotten recently have been people telling me how awful I am and that was how our last face-to-face interaction went so why would you be any different? _ “I don’t know.”

“You…” Clicking noises fill the pause, probably Jared’s MacBook keyboard that’s always been annoyingly loud. “You wrote that? All of it?”

Evan drops his head into his free hand. Of course it’s about the letter, everything is now, and Jared would have splashed it all over the Internet first if he’d had the chance. He said so himself. “You know I did.”

“I didn’t know what it said.”

“I didn’t want you to see this.” The letter is right in front of him, plastered on one of half a dozen Connor Project sites, but even if it weren’t, the words never leave him.  _ I wish that everything was different. I wish that I was a part of… something. I wish that anything I said mattered — _ “Or anyone.” 

“No wonder.” 

Evan officially has no idea where this is going. “Did you… want something?”

An interminable silence.

“Will you be in school on Monday?”

The thought of returning to school — whether that means being heaped with praise for raising all that money for the orchard, or facing another barrage of hatred for lying to everyone around him, hatred he fully deserves — makes his stomach churn and his hands shake. “I don’t know, I might not —”

“Just… don’t do anything stupid.” Their connection must be bad, because Jared’s voice is breaking up and wavering now. “Please?”

“…Okay.”

The line goes dead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/184228545198/83-kleinsen)


	5. “I don’t know anyone else who can make me feel this way.”

“Four minutes, thirty-three seconds.”

“It’s supposed to be five minutes, right?”

“Yup.” Jared taps at his phone. His face flickers on Evan’s laptop screen, pixelated and muted in color. “You just need to talk slower. Right now you sound like you’re auditioning for  _ The Pirates of Penzance. _ Tone it down.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You’re in AP Lit and you don’t know what ‘tone it down’ means? The educational system really has failed us.”

“No, I meant — whatever.” Evan sets down his note cards. The carefully penciled words that cover the cards are smeared and wrinkled from how he’s been clutching them. “I wish we didn’t have to do this in front of the whole class.”

“The point is to practice public speaking. Doesn’t count if it’s not public.”

“Well, I hate public speaking.”

“So does everyone, you’re not special.”

“It’s not the same.” He hates when Jared says things like that, insisting that everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing to someone they don’t know well, everyone is worried about one misstep ruining their entire future, everyone feels like they don’t  _ really _ have any friends, because if everyone feels the same way Evan does, then why is he the only one who shows it? “I’m going to freak out the entire time, and they’ll all be able to tell.”

“And then they’ll move on to the next person who has to talk,” Jared says, “and no one will care fifteen minutes later. Assuming they even care at the time.”

“This is for a grade, it won’t just go away.” His collar feels too tight, and his hands are getting damp, and Jared won’t  _ listen _ to him. “Mrs. Newcomb’s going to pay attention, she’s grading it, and if we’re doing a peer grading thing then so will everyone else, and, and I don’t know —”

“Hey!” Jared snaps his fingers a couple times; it’s the motion more than the sound that draws Evan’s attention. “Breathe. Don’t make yourself pass out before we even get to school.”

Evan nods, deliberately inhaling and exhaling. He stares at a bent corner on one of his note cards. It’s something else to think about.

“I don’t know anyone else who can make me feel this way,” Jared mutters, and Evan freezes, fingers curling around the sides of his chair.

“What, um.” He clears his throat. “What are you talking about?”

Jared looks away, drumming on his desk over and over. The silence aches.

“I don’t know,” he says, no longer casual. “You being anxious right now is making me anxious. Whenever you get upset, I end up that way too. It’s like your emotions are contagious.” He adjusts his glasses. “That doesn’t happen with other people. Or to other people.”

And Evan gets what he means, kind of, because he remembers when they were young and one of them crying about a skinned knee or a broken toy or how much it hurt to have everyone staring at them and not know what for would inevitably set the other off. When Evan was sick at school one day in sixth grade and had to go home, and found out when he came back that, according to their science teacher, Jared had looked “like a ghost” and barely talked for the rest of the day. How Evan was never that afraid of Connor Murphy until he realized that Jared was. 

He just doesn’t get  _ why. _

“Can you run through it again already?” Jared says. “I do actually have other shit to do.” He holds up his phone, poised to start the timer. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Okay.” Evan puts the cards back in order, lifts the first from the top of the pile, inhales, exhales, and begins. “Daisy Buchanan is one of the main characters of  _ The Great Gatsby _ by F. Scott Fitzgerald…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/184673511727/oh-and-if-its-ok-to-send-another-i-dont-know)


	6. “Please shut up. Just shut up.”

Evan leans on the back of Jared’s chair, his hand just brushing Jared’s shoulder, to squint at the laptop screen. He’s complained more than once that Jared has the brightness set way too low. “That doesn’t look like an email.”

“I’m trying to write it in verse form. Push my creative limits. If I don’t switch things up I’ll fall asleep from boredom doing these.”

Evan walks around the chair, pacing in front of him, and the slightest smile keeps forming on his face, like he’s one of those SNL cast members who still hasn’t figured out how not to crack up on air. “The Murphys are actually going to read what you’re writing, you know.”

“Maybe Connor was a poet. You don’t know.” It’s just as realistic as anything else they’re making up about him. Jared scrolls up to one that he figures won’t give Evan a case of the vapours. “I once had a buddy named Evan —”

“That’s, that’s very original.”

An encouraging start. “Who fell far as if out of heaven —” 

That hint of a smile drops completely. 

“He fucked up his arm —”

“Jared, please —”

“But felt no other harm, then we made out at —”

The laptop slams shut, and Jared barely yanks his hands out of the way quickly enough to avoid crushed fingers. As it is, the edge of the lid still scrapes his knuckles, leaving enough of a sting in its wake for him to be sure he’s lost some skin. Who knew these things could draw blood?

He looks up at Evan, who’s standing much too close, glancing between Jared’s face and the Mac logo, now unilluminated. 

“Shut up,” Evan whispers insistently. “Just shut up.”

"What the hell was that for?"

“I… I don’t know why I did that.” That makes two of them. “Can you just take that part out? Please?”

“Sure, if you haven’t completely destroyed the screen. These things are fragile.” Jared lifts the lid, and the screen, thankfully intact, lights up obligingly. 

He types in his password and backspaces all the way to  _ I once had a buddy _ before adding, “You do know it was a joke, right? I wasn’t actually going to give the Murphys a bunch of limericks and say Connor wrote them.”

“Well, it wasn’t funny,” Evan snaps, before his shoulders slump and he crosses the room to collapse into Jared’s bean bag chair like his strings have been cut. “At all.”

Jared pauses in typing  _ Dear Evan Hansen _ at the top of yet another page to look at Evan over his laptop, to really see him. He’s curled up almost in a ball now, picking relentlessly at the edges of his cast and sending tiny flakes of plaster fluttering to the carpet, eyes fixed on the Sharpie scrawl there.

_ He fucked up his arm — _

“Are you okay?” The question slips out before he can clamp down on it.

Evan blinks and drops his hands stiffly into his lap. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean, you just…” The pieces are all there, surely, the stupid poem and Evan flipping out and then practically trying to tear his cast off his arm, but Jared can’t figure out how to put them together, or if he even should. “Whatever. Just tell me what you want me to write next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/185398125619/zero-pressure-just-for-fun-feel-free-to-make-it)


	7. “Don’t try to fix me. I’m not broken.”

“Yeah, his mom said it was fine as long as you agreed.… It’s, uh, it’s for a school thing.” Evan looks over to Jared, locking eyes with him as if to say  _ the Connor Project totally counts as a school thing, work with me here. _ “The guest room, I figured.”

“We’re making him sleep in the garage, actually,” Jared says, loudly enough that Evan throws his own balled-up gray hoodie at Jared with the hand that isn’t holding the phone to his ear and Heidi chuckles audibly at the other end of the line.

“Okay, thanks, I…” Evan stops speaking just long enough to grimace. “Yes, okay, love you too, bye,” and he hangs up and sags in Jared’s desk chair. “Oh my  _ God.” _

“What, did she tell you not to do any drugs while you’re here? She should know my parents aren’t nearly cool enough for that to happen.”

Evan tilts his head over onto one shoulder to look at Jared with resignation. It’s almost endearing. “She told me to ‘enjoy your sleepover.’ She thinks I’m twelve.”

“That's adorable.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

Jared claps his hands together. “What’s first on the agenda for our sleepover, then? Truth or Dare? Friendship bracelets? Painting each other’s nails and talking about — girls?”

He waits for Evan to say that he’s ridiculous, too, but Evan turns back and forth in Jared’s chair and stares at the carpet, at the flattened spot where he left a full basket of laundry for two weeks that he just emptied yesterday.

“Connor used to paint his nails,” Evan says. “Zoe told me.” 

It’s amazing how a string of nine little words can produce the sensation of being attacked with multiple baseball bats at once. With nails hammered into them.

“She had to tell you that?”  _ Did you have to tell me that? _ “What kind of fake friend are you, anyway?”  _ The kind who’s thinking more about a guy he’ll never know than one who’s sitting right in front of him? _

“Well, I acted like I knew already, obviously,” Evan huffs. “And it’s not like you knew either. Or like you’d even care.”

Jared did know that, actually, because he has eyes, and glasses, but the indignity of Evan assuming Jared’s just as oblivious as he is pales beside the piercing irony of Evan thinking he doesn’t care. As if caring too much and too long about Evan isn’t exactly why he’s a participant in this mess in the first place. 

“I think your old toothbrush is still in the bathroom,” he says, instead of anything he’s really thinking about. 

“Well, that’s nice.”

“And if it isn’t, there’s a bunch of new ones under the sink.” Jared runs through a mental list of other stuff he might need — clean sheets, a frankly unreasonable number of pillows, different clothes for tomorrow… “Do you have your meds for in the morning or do I have to go get them from your house?”

More chair spinning. “I’m not really taking them. Anymore, I mean.”

“…Are you supposed to be?”

“Uh…”

“So, yes.” Jared doesn’t know exactly what diagnosis Evan has — it’s not something he ever wants to talk about — but it doesn’t take a detective to guess there’s some brand of anxiety involved, and that sure hasn’t gone away in the past two weeks. “Look, I may not be an expert, but I’m pretty sure just deciding to do that is, how do I put this, terrible for you —”

“Don’t try to…” Evan waves a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Fix me. I’m not broken. And I don’t want to keep feeling like I am.”

“I didn’t say you were. All I’m saying is, just stopping taking prescription meds out of the blue is guaranteed to fuck up anybody’s shit, including but not limited to yours.”

“How would you know?” Evan says, but he doesn’t sound angry or fed up with Jared. Just exhausted.

“Google is free, bro.” Actually, it was Wikipedia — he’d been clicking around, trying to find answers for his AP Psych homework while also putting off doing it, and ended up reading all about antidepressants and the shitty side effects they could have, especially in the first few weeks, and the different but equally shitty effects of just quitting them out of nowhere, and how you’d have to talk to a psychiatrist if you wanted them, anyway, so why bother?

Evan sighs before getting up from Jared’s chair. “I’m going to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/186507803765/dont-try-to-fix-me-im-not-broken)


	8. things you said that made me feel like shit

It’s 12:59 AM, and Jared hasn’t slept in about nineteen hours, and the Connor Project website still stubbornly refuses to load. All his time waiting on hold with the hosting provider and wrangling with the command line has done approximately nothing, except bring hundreds more people to every one of their social media sites for Alana to deal with. How she puts up with all their complaining he’ll never know.

A piercing shriek cuts through the electronica filling his headphones, making him jump, and half a second later a Skype notification pops up at the bottom of his screen, bearing Evan’s face. Why did he ever change his incoming call sound to a death metal scream, anyway? (And why hasn’t he changed it back yet?)

Jared pauses the music and accepts the call, expanding the window to fill about half the screen. On the left, the cursor still blinks in the Terminal window; on the right, Evan blinks at him from a dim room.

“Hey.” There’s a pillow behind Evan’s head. He’s lying in bed, then.

“Hey.”

“You’re awake late.”

“You’re the one who called me.” Jared taps lightly on the keyboard without pressing any keys. “The website’s still down.”

Evan makes a sympathetic noise. “Again?”

“Again. Our server is trash.” Normally Evan doesn’t make small talk like this — he just jumps right into presenting Jared with some new problem he’s made for himself and then sits back to hear about how he should fix it. Either he’s feeling bizarrely sociable thanks to Internet stardom, or he really doesn’t want to tell Jared whatever he’s called to tell him. “Can’t imagine you’re taking time out of your evening just to hear me complain about how we should have sprung for more RAM, though.”

“Uh, no, not really.” Evan glances around and away from the camera, rubbing at his face. “I… well.”

“Did you kill someone? Because there’s nowhere good around here to hide a body.”

That doesn’t even get a verbal response, just a roll of the eyes, but Jared will take exasperated Evan over anxious Evan any day. “I went over to Zoe’s house today.”

Not the Murphys’ house — Zoe’s house, as if she’s the only person who’s ever lived there. “And?”

“And.” Evan tugs at his collar. “We were in Connor’s room. She told me about, how much I’d given her and her family, how I’d given her Connor back, and then…” The longer he draws this out, the higher Jared’s own adrenaline levels are spiking. “She kissed me.”

Jared freezes.

“What?”

“She kissed me,” Evan repeats, rushing through his words now, “and I didn’t, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I kissed her back, and we —”

“Yeah, I get the picture. I don’t need a description.” That he can imagine all too well. Evan walking through her house, Evan sitting on her brother’s bed, her mouth on Evan’s, her hands on Evan’s shoulders or around his waist or in his hair —

Jared gets the picture. He wishes he didn’t.

Evan’s still watching him. “Are you going to say anything?”

“Like what?” He feels like he’s falling, that same sickening weightlessness that happens just after going over the top of a rollercoaster, and that’s not conducive to pulling a  _ bon mot _ about Evan getting with the girl of his dreams under the most nightmarish circumstances imaginable out of his ass.

“I don’t know! You always have something to say about me and Zoe. Like, ‘wow, Evan, you let Zoe Murphy kiss you on her dead brother’s bed, that’s fucked up and probably illegal or something.’” His imitation of Jared’s voice sucks.

“Well, there you go. You’ve clearly worked out the obvious issue for yourself. What do you need me for?”

“I haven’t told anyone else,” Evan says. It sounds an awful lot like  _ please don’t tell anyone else. _ “I couldn’t.”

“Why don’t you talk to Zoe?” The words taste of acid to Jared, and Evan must agree, judging by his grimace. “She’s the party in interest here.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Jared laughs. “Good luck with that, then,” he says, and hangs up.

It’s 1:01 AM. Skype says the call lasted for 2 minutes and 27 seconds. A lifetime.

He’s going to be exhausted tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187012776379/10-kleinsen)


	9. things you said when you were scared

The door to the auditorium is locked.

This is a problem, because Jared slept through all his alarms this morning (which, fuck) and upon waking up realized that not only was he late, today was the day of the Connor Project kickoff assembly (which, double fuck), and checked his phone to find two missed calls from Alana and, more concerningly, a series of half a dozen increasingly frantic and typo-ridden texts from Evan (which, triple fuck, or quadruple fuck if you preferred your fucks to increase in powers of two.) He rolled out of bed, skipped breakfast, and broke at least one speed limit to get here, and now he can’t even get into the room where the shitshow is scheduled to happen.

“You can’t go in there.” Alana’s come up behind him, somehow without him hearing her approaching, and she doesn’t sound happy.

“Yeah, I know. It’s locked.”

“No, I mean, you can’t go in there, because you’ll disrupt the assembly.” Alana pulls a weathered key from her pocket (of course she’d have a key) and opens not the auditorium door, but one a few feet to the left, which from what Jared can see leads backstage. “The jazz band just finished.” The fading applause and scraping of music stands being folded up agree with that.

Jared follows Alana into the wings, weaving through rows of heavy curtains and costume racks and worn prop furniture. They pass the band kids trickling backstage — including Zoe, who gives them both a stare that he can’t even begin to unpack — and Sabrina, seemingly still collecting herself after her speech, who Alana stops to talk to, leaving Jared to wander through the darkness until he finds Evan, who looks up as he approaches. He’s sitting in a plastic chair, wearing a blue dress shirt, a tie Jared doesn’t recognize, and an expression of sheer terror.

“Where were you?” he whispers. “You were supposed to be here two hours ago.”

“I overslept, okay?” Jared whispers back. “It doesn’t matter, I’m not even on the schedule.” 

“I can’t do this.” Evan twists the pile of index cards in his hands, nearly bending them in half. “I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”

“Well, it’s too late to back out now.”

“I can’t —” After a glance around, Evan lowers his voice still further. “I can’t go out there and  _ lie _ to all those people!”

“You already are, dude. This just makes it official.”

Evan slumps in the chair, covering his mouth with one hand, eyes slipping into a thousand-yard stare. He’s trembling all over, Jesus, this is a retread of the English class debacle from last year. Jared needs to say something that’s comforting, or supportive, or at least helpful, since he’s really no good at those first two. Normally he gets through presentations by cracking a joke every few minutes, to put himself and the audience at ease, but he doubts that’ll fly here.

“Okay, look.” He extends a hand and, after some internal debate, puts it on Evan’s shoulder. “This is the same story you told the Murphys, right? So pretend you’re just talking to them and ignore the rest of the audience. Do you think that’ll help?”

“No.”

For fuck’s sake. “At least  _ try _ to work with me here.”

“I was terrified when I told them that story!” Frustration edges out the fear in Evan’s voice for a moment. “Doing it again won’t be any better.”

“Well —” The stage must be empty by now; if Jared doesn’t think of something soon, Evan’s going to be completely screwed. “Pretend you’re talking to me instead. It’s not like you’re actually tricking me.”

“That…” Evan nods slowly, gaze becoming more focused. “Might work. If you’re going to be where I can see you.”

“Evan!” How does Alana keep sneaking up on him? “Everything’s set up for you. Time to go on.”

Any composure that Evan had managed to scrape together drains away. “I, it’s — already?”

“Yes. I know you’re going to do a great job.” Alana smiles brightly, but it’s a little strained. Evan stands slowly and moves forward, looking queasy. Jared kind of wishes he were still asleep.

“Can I just sit in the house?” he asks, aiming for a tone of boredom rather than desperation. “I’m tired of being stuck back here.”

Alana, because she is gracious, doesn’t point out that he’s been back here for three minutes at most. “Almost every seat is taken. You won’t be able to find an empty one without disrupting the audience members.”

“If you just give me a minute —”

But Evan has already disappeared into the dim clutter, walking as if to his own execution, and Jared can only listen to whatever happens next, hidden from sight.

_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187108828580/18-with-kleinsen-love-your-writing)


	10. things you said after it was over

“I can add an email signup form to the site,” Jared says. “Piece of cake. Just don’t expect me to contribute much to the newsletter.”

He and Alana are both sitting across from Evan at this cafeteria table — Jared was here first, actually, headphones on and laptop open when Evan sat down to talk to him, and moments later Alana showed up and turned it into an impromptu Connor Project meeting. According to her, their initial audience engagement was much higher than expected (which Evan could have guessed from how much Jared’s been struggling with the website, or from, say, looking at any of their social media profiles for two minutes) but is now dropping, and that’s a problem. Hence, the meeting, for brainstorming ways to keep people’s attention.

“That would be great,” Alana says. “And you wouldn’t have to write a lot — I’m sure whatever you’d have to say would be fine.”

Jared meets Evan’s eyes for a moment, then glances away. “I’m not a writer, that’s Evan’s thing.”

Evan fights off the fleeting impulse to slam his head into the table. “Right.”

“I was also considering a series of videos —” Alana’s watch beeps shrilly, cutting her off mid sentence. “Meet again on Thursday? I have to go.”

“Sure,” Jared says, echoed by Evan’s “That works for me.”

Alana beams as she gathers up her notebook, pen, and bag, and weaves through the lunchtime chaos with a spring in her step. By contrast, Jared looks exhausted, returning his gaze to Evan with wide eyes. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“This is a whole  _ thing _ now.” He gestures between himself, Evan, and the spot where Alana was. “The Connor Project. Next thing you know, we’ll have to fill out tax forms.”

“It’s helping people,” Evan says defensively. If it weren’t, they wouldn’t even be talking about this. Just yesterday, someone he didn’t know at all messaged him on Twitter — not the Connor Project’s account, him specifically, Evan Hansen — to pour out the story of the last three years of their life and thank him for everything he’s done. (And by some miracle, he gave a response that was coherent and maybe helpful, instead of panicking and blocking the account.) “A lot of people.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t. Just that it’s way bigger than I thought I was signing on for.”

“You — you’re not quitting, are you?” The thought of Jared walking away from this completely, leaving Evan to juggle growing responsibilities and the story underlying them all on his own, is a bit chilling.

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” Jared says. “I’m not a fan.” He leans further over the table, lowering his voice, as if anyone nearby could possibly make out what they’re saying to begin with. “What I’m saying is, there’s no going back from this. If you were ever planning to tell everyone the truth…”

“It’s too late now,” Evan finishes. “I know. It would only make things worse.” He’s thought through all of this already, again and again, has been ever since Zoe kissed him and Jared refused to tear him apart for it. “Okay. So we don’t tell anyone, ever.”

Jared nods and sticks out a hand. “Shake on it? We might as well.”

Evan takes the hand — it’s freezing, Jared’s hands always are — and shakes it, feeling kind of silly. It’s oddly formal and childish at the same time; Jared agrees, judging from the wry tilt to his mouth. Or from him proceeding to lock the door on his mouth and throw away the key.

“How old are you again?”

“Older than you,” Jared says, reopening his laptop, and for a moment Evan can forget the weight of what brought them to this conversation in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187172469522/22-kleinsen)


	11. things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

“It is my pleasure and honor to pronounce you all graduates of Twelve Corners —”

The superintendent doesn’t even get to the end of his sentence before everyone starts cheering, standing up and throwing their caps in the air and hugging each other. Evan tosses his cap too, just a few feet overhead; when he looks down his row of seats, he sees Jared throwing his well above him and scrambling to catch it before it hits someone.

The teachers usher them into a back room to pick up their real diplomas, alphabetically organized and waiting to be placed into the empty cases they were all handed on stage. Laughter and whispers of  _ where’s mine? _ and  _ I can’t believe we’re high schoolers now! _ fill the air from wall to wall.

Just as Evan’s found the certificate bearing his name, Jared taps him on the shoulder, cap tucked under his arm. “Come on, my mom wants pictures.”

“Hang on a minute —” Evan slides the paper into his diploma case as best as he can before letting Jared tug him by one hand through the throng of graduates still crowded around the table and flooding into the parking lot. They pass Sophie Rodgers, who won’t look at Jared but waves to Evan, and Connor Murphy, who’s arguing with his dad, before reaching Jared’s mom, who’s waiting side by side near the front doors with Evan’s mom.

“Oh, honey,” Evan’s mom says, pulling him into a hug. “I am so proud of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Evan protests, but he doesn’t try to fight down the giddy warmth that’s filling him up — he did it, he finished middle school, and she always tells him that things will only get better from here.

Evan’s mom lets go to step back from him, hands on his shoulders, assessing him. “When did you get so tall?”

“Last week,” Jared says, making both their moms laugh.

“Pictures!” Jared’s mom arranges the two of them next to each other under a tree, straightening Jared’s tie and smoothing his collar as he swats at her hands, then pulls out her camera.

They stand there long enough for Jared’s mom to take what must be a hundred pictures, alternating smiles and serious expressions and goofing off. Normally Evan hates smiling for photos — it always feels so fake and forced, and it looks that way in the final picture — but now it isn’t hard at all, even when he’s been smiling so long that his face is starting to hurt.

“That has to be enough pictures,” Jared says at last, taking his arm away from around Evan’s shoulder. “Mom, you said we could go to Abbott’s after, they’re still open.”

“I did — Heidi, do you and Evan want to join us?”

Evan turns to his mom, who’s looking doubtful. “Can we, please?”

She checks her watch. “I don’t know, sweetheart, my shift starts in an hour…” 

“I wouldn’t mind taking Evan with us,” Jared’s mom says. “I can drop him off for you.”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind —”

Jared high fives Evan, and they both take off running across the parking lot, over Evan’s mom’s admonishment to “be safe, I love you!” 

Abbott’s Frozen Custard is close enough to the middle school that they could walk, but they all get into Jared’s mom’s car instead; though she offers Jared the shotgun seat, he slides into the back row next to Evan. They pull out of the parking lot, passing the nearby fire station. Jared’s mom turns on the radio, and a song Evan doesn’t know pours out, fast and twangy, something about fallout and walls and standing alone.

Jared gets quiet, looking out the window for a minute, before turning back to Evan. “Do you think we’re still going to be friends in high school?” 

“Yeah,” Evan says, baffled. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Jared’s mom is watching them in the rear-view mirror, even though she’s pretending not to.

Jared shrugs. “High school is where, like, everything happens. It changes things.”

“I guess.” That’s kind of a less optimistic version of what his mom’s been telling him. “But it doesn’t have to change everything, I don’t think.”

Jared nods and looks relieved.

“What about you?” Evan says. “Do you think we’ll still be friends then?”

“Definitely,” Jared says. “Best friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187221937790/19-kleinsen-let-them-be-happy)


	12. things you said after you kissed me

The crickets chirping outside on summer nights are always louder at Jared’s house. Evan doesn’t know if it’s that the freeway is further off and can’t drown out the sounds of nature with traffic noises as thoroughly, or that there’s just something about this part of the neighborhood that attracts more crickets with more to say.

“Can you do something about that?” he asks Jared, sprawled on the bean bag chair under the window.

Jared blinks at him, dazed. He might have been asleep before Evan said anything. “About what?”

“The crickets, they’re really loud.”

“Sure, yeah,” Jared says, speaking more sharply now, “I’ll just go right out and tell them all to keep it down, if they don’t mind, what with how I’m a, a cricket whisperer. Sorry I forgot.”

In Evan’s defense, he’s not completely awake either. “I meant, like, closing the window. Or putting on music or something.”

“If you insist.” Jared shoves himself to his feet, swaying in place for a moment before crossing the room. He turns on his record player and drops the needle on the record already sitting there. It’s a woman’s voice singing, high and sad. 

“Is this someone new?”

Jared turns to look at him with disappointment. “It’s Joni Mitchell.”

“Oh, well, obviously,” Evan says, mimicking his tone from moments before. Jared grins at him, and instead of returning to the bean bag chair, he sprawls unceremoniously on his own bed, lying side by side with Evan.

“And it’s her best album, too.” Jared pulls off his glasses and starts polishing them with the hem of his shirt. “Last year NPR voted it the greatest album ever made by a woman.”

Evan focuses on the faded Austin Powers poster on the far wall — he’d been staring at Jared’s exposed stomach for no reason. “That’s cool.” 

“Extremely.” With glasses newly cleaned and replaced, Jared rolls onto his side, now facing Evan. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Maybe it’s weird for two guys who’ve finished a year of college to be lying this close together on one of their beds, but it has to be objectively weirder for two guys who were keeping a horrible secret from the whole world and then had a brutal argument about it and avoided each other for over a year to even want to be in the same room, so Evan figures the standard rules of what’s weird don’t really apply to them anyway.

Jared must feel the potential for tension too. “You come here often?”

“Only on Tuesdays.”

Jared laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners, and maybe it’s the heat, or the late hour, or the closeness, or Joni crooning  _ so bitter and so sweet, oh, I could drink a case of you… _ across the room, but there’s not a single fully formed thought in Evan’s head when he kisses Jared. 

He’d closed his eyes; he opens them to find Jared staring back at him in shock, mouth slightly open, the picture of unguarded surprise. His glasses are newly smudged.

“Shit,” Evan says, because it’s the first response that comes to mind. The second is  _ I don’t know why I did that, _ but that’s a lie. “I shouldn’t have done that, should I —”

“No,” Jared blurts, then blinks for a long moment, pained. “Not like that, I mean, I’m saying that you saying you shouldn’t have done what you did isn’t, uh…”

“What?” Usually Evan’s the one tripping over his words, and it’s disorienting to hear Jared do it.

“I don’t know either.” Jared sighs. “Completely fucking this up.”

“That’s not true.”

Jared studies Evan quietly, eyes roving over his face. Then he leans in and kisses Evan, warm and careful, a cool hand on his cheek that cuts through the stifling air of the room. 

When he pulls away, Evan’s head is filled with stars.

“There,” Jared says. “That’s what I mean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187394446164/can-i-get-14-kleinsen-please-i-love-your-writing)


	13. things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear

The Murphys are crazy rich. Jared’s suspected as much for some time — Zoe’s shiny new car is proof enough — but their house confirms it, with its towering columns and four-car garage and circular driveway that would surely be a pain in the ass for them to shovel if they weren’t hiring someone to do it. And with the brick mailbox that Evan is stuffing neatly folded printouts of fake emails into. Apparently he can only handle so much of lying right to the Murphys’ faces.

“That’s all of them,” Evan says, closing the mailbox and falling back into his seat.

“Mission accomplished.” Jared puts the car in gear, steering away from the curb with one hand while extending the other to Evan in a fist. “Bump me.”

Evan doesn’t. He just sits there, unmoving, staring into the passenger side mirror like he’s waiting for it to give him the answer to some great impossible question.

“Evan?”

“Pull over.”

“Why?”

“Seriously.” Evan barely opens his mouth to speak. “Pull over. I think I’m going to puke.”

“Oh my God —” He veers back over to the curb, braking too hard. They’ve left the Murphys’ house behind, a cluster of trees waiting beyond the sidewalk here instead. “Please not in the car.”

Evan opens the door; Jared expects him to just lean over and ruin someone’s curb strip, but he shoves his seatbelt aside — did he ever have it buckled? — and takes off running into the pathetic suburban excuse for a forest, disappearing from sight. After closing the door behind him. How thoughtful.

Jared rests his head on the rim of the steering wheel and tries to breathe normally. For whatever reason, people throwing up anywhere near him — or even just talking about it — messes with his head, and the rest of him too. And when “people” means “Evan,” it’s twice as bad. 

He shifts his weight, not even thinking about it, but just enough to set the horn blaring underneath him. In bolting upright and away from the steering wheel, he whacks his right hand on the wheel’s underside and slams too hard into the head restraint. A light turns on in the house across the street, an insult added to twin injuries. Funny — he doesn’t recall auditioning to be the fourth fucking Stooge.

Other lights flicker to life — not lamps being lit in windows to better see the weirdo blasting his horn while parked in the middle of the road, but street lights turning on in response to the growing dusk. It’s practically nighttime. Which means that Evan is wandering around in the woods in the dark, or else collapsed on the ground dying of dehydration in the woods in the dark, and Jared is just sitting here like an idiot waiting for him to come back.

“God  _ damn _ it,” Jared mumbles to himself, before getting out of the car and locking it, keys and phone in his unhurt hand, and setting off into the trees.

Calling this place a forest would be like calling golf a sport, but it’s gone dark enough just a few yards in that he turns on his phone flashlight, scanning the underbrush for something Evan-shaped and trying not to trip over any dead branches. He searches for maybe a minute more before his light falls on a patch of familiar blue stripes.

Evan’s standing (a good sign) and leaning against a tree, his back to Jared. He’s not making any stomach-turning sounds (an even better sign)… but he’s talking?

“…and Zoe still hates you. She doesn’t want to hear anything about you. A couple emails won’t change that.”

That’s a hell of a pep talk.

A few moments’ silence, then, “You want me to lie to her more?”

Okay, maybe Jared should stop eavesdropping on what’s clearly a private conversation. Probably.

“Who are you talking to?” Evan spins around, startled, squinting in the light. “This is a terrible place for a drug deal.”

“I, uh… just myself.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “How long have you been there, anyway?”

“Not that long.” That’s vague enough that it isn’t necessarily a lie. “Is this another one of your sex letter things?”

“I told you it’s not a sex thing,” Evan sighs, which Jared remembers perfectly well, and Evan knows he knows. 

“Well, whatever it is, it’d be great if you could do it somewhere else. I’m not going to hang out on a rich people’s street at night waiting to find out if those neighborhood watch signs we passed on the way here were worth the cost of installation.”

Evan looks up to the sky, squinting at the emerging stars through the leaves. “Oh. Yeah, it is getting late.” When his gaze returns to Jared, it’s paired with a tight-lipped frown. “Do you have any water or anything? My mouth tastes kind of…” Thankfully, he waves a hand vaguely instead of finishing that sentence.

Jared mentally catalogues the contents of his car. “I’ve got half a water bottle in there somewhere.”

“Okay.”

“And I won’t want it back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original post [here.](https://nothingunrealistic.tumblr.com/post/187758400269/kleinsen-and-20-please)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on Tumblr @nothingunrealistic.


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